Susan and John Ruff, Fantasy Authors

With the publication of The Grand Door, the third and final book of our Doorway to Magic trilogy, coming up on March 16, this seems like a fine time to reminisce a little about the twisted path we took to get there.

It all started in a Fuddrucker’s restaurant. Back in the 1990’s, John and I were eating burgers one evening in our local Fuddrucker’s when I got the idea for the book that later became The Keyhole Wizard. As I recall, I had recently read David Eddings Belgariad series or another fantasy novel where a prophecy plays an important part. Prophecies are a pretty common trope in fantasy novels. They always come true and usually in an unexpected way. (Nazgul: “Thou fool. No living man may hinder me.” Eowyn: “But no living man am I…” etc.)

As we were eating our burgers that night, I said something like, “One of these days, I want to write a fantasy novel in which the prophecy is false right from the beginning and never meant to come true.” The conversation quickly went on to other topics (probably related to whatever rpg we were playing at the time), and the story idea got shelved like so many other “one of these days” activities.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2020 and the dark days of the pandemic. It was September, and John and I had been “sheltering at home” for about six months. Scientists were working on vaccinations which looked promising, but no one knew for certain whether they would work and when they would be ready for the public.

As you know from this blog, I love to travel. Being stuck at home for so many months, while undoubtedly safer for my physical health, did not do any good for my state of mind. By September, I had fallen into what I called the “pandemic malaise.” John and I had been trying to rewrite an old fantasy novel manuscript, but it was not working well and I had very little enthusiasm for the project. I needed a fresh start with something new.

That’s when I remembered the false prophecy idea. My original story proposal was different from what we later wrote — for example, Buradnor was a charlatan (a fake wizard with no magic whatsoever) who crafted the false prophecy as part of a get-rich scheme. When I told John about my proposed novel, he pointed out several huge plot holes. Then we worked together to craft a better story.

Keyhole magic was not part of the original story. When we started writing the book, I knew I wanted our magic system to be different from other fantasy stories, but we had not determined what to do with it. Gradually, the idea developed of a dangerous magic system that could cause a caster to lose fingers or even hands if done improperly. Then one morning while I was taking a walk, it occurred to me — if a door slams on you, it can really mess up your fingers. From there, we developed the idea of the magical Door and the hero’s unique way of accessing its magic through a keyhole.

By July 2021, we were ready to self-publish. Unfortunately, neither John nor I knew anything about book marketing. We called the book Prophecy’s Malignant Son, and I designed a home-made book cover using my own photographs.

We were already writing book 2 of the trilogy when we decided to get some professional marketing advice. The marketers wisely suggested that we lose the homemade book cover, so we hired a company to create a new cover for us:

As the second book of the series neared completion, we realized that the story had moved far beyond the false prophecy gimmick of the first book. Instead, we had built an entire fantasy universe with its own distinct characters and a unique system of magic.

The professional marketers suggested that we do a full make-over. We changed the name of the book to The Keyhole Wizard, called the series The Doorway to Magic, and paid for a really nice cover. We republished the book under its new name in 2022.

The working title for the second book was Dual-Wielder. However, that term was already used in other fantasy works, including a famous rpg that John and I liked to play, and I afraid it might be someone else’s proprietary term. So I changed the word to “double-caster” throughout the books. That did not sound good for a title, and we were trying to stay with the “Door” theme, so we finally settled on The Door Ajar. We used the same company to design the book cover, and they did an outstanding job. I fell in love with the cover the minute I saw it:

To avoid spoilers, I don’t want to say too much about the third book yet. The Grand Door will be published on March 16, exactly four years after the publication of our first book (a standalone fantasy novel called 60th Hour).

John and I are very excited about the new book. We hope it will tie the trilogy together in an enjoyable way. The company that did the amazing covers for the first two books no longer creates book covers, but we hired another company that did an excellent job of capturing the style of the prior book covers:

Wow! I didn’t realize today’s post would end up being so long. To those of you who followed this unusually long blog post all the way to the end, thank you!

And, of course, a special thanks to all our readers of both my blog and our books. You are the folks who make it all worth while!

-Susan 3/1/2024